Blog Post

The invisible line has been drawn somewhere in the ecclesiastic sands of time between community and personal service in the name of Jesus Christ as the aim, goal, and purpose of the Church that bears his name and service to those who belong to and support the institution. It may be that service to its members has caused the Church of Jesus Christ to fall into social irrelevance, hypocrisy, and a decline that threatens to erase what history records as “Christianity.”

The original ethical layer of the faith, as practiced by Jesus and taught by Paul, rests in sacrificing one’s self to improve the lives of others, going out of one’s way for every “neighbor,” and testifying to a divine intent for justice, equality, and peace. Jesus lived by that ethic. He expressed it in relationship with lepers, prostitutes, beggars, widows, orphans, the sick and dying, women, Romans, Jews, rulers, and wedding hosts.

Jesus lived at a time when the ancestral religion of his fathers (and mothers), had fallen into ritualized practices and faithfulness to laws that were meant to keep persons in relationship with God. Because the Temple and Synagogue were compromised by relationship with the Roman government, promising to remain inert in social action, justice, and peace. The religion was meant to serve its adherents, to maintain proper relationship with God, to assure righteousness and moral propriety. Practice of the faith did not lead to social action or communal benefit. It divided Jews from others. It resulted in a practice of faith that was sectarian, limited, unavailable to those of other faiths and practices.

Jesus was a critic of the Temple, not because it was Jewish but because its Jewishness lured it away from the ethic that benefited all humankind. The initial population that followed Christ Jesus were therefore on the fringes of cultural acceptance. They were the great unclean, uncared for, dregs, lazy, good-for-nothing, beggars at the city gates. They were the ill and ailing, the rejected and expelled masses of those who stretched the periphery of worthiness.

That began to change as the first generation of those who followed Jesus and Paul began to die. A new rule replaced the ethic of Jesus and Paul. The new ethic placed the coming of God’s kingdom far off into the future. The religion’s purpose, aim, and goal developed into being rewarded forever in heaven if one lived righteously, according to the orthodoxies. The Church became guarantor of avoiding eternity in the punishment of Hell. The Church promised that, should one live one’s life “properly,” one would be rewarded instead of punished. To this end, the Church entered relationship with the State and its definitions, values, and systems.

The Church lived this alternative ethic for centuries. It lived as though rewarding its own adherents was its goal and purpose. In so doing, the Church closed itself off from the original ethic of servanthood, sacrifice, and vocation-in-life from Christ Jesus and Paul.

In recent years, culture has moved in a direction that now necessitates that the Church of Jesus Christ recover the servant ethic of Jesus and Paul. Whereas the ethic of membership entitlements and member services closed off the Church from communities and populations, the new cultural trends call the Church from its parochialism. The cultural patterns are coming clearer. The directions are more established. They lean toward acceptance of diversity, respect of all persons, protection of weaker populations, equality justice for all, and establishment of systems that benefit each one.

Churches that make the ethical transition, those that teach and embody the ethic of Jesus and Paul, will thrive as the culture evolves. Those that do not, who choose instead of cling to the ethic of membership services and entitlement, will continue to diminish and disappear.

Most of the conversations I hear and have with congregations highlight this evolutionary period and the incredibly difficult transition to which it calls us. I am confident, though, in the power of divine Spirit, which guides and empowers us. We can and will make the ethical transitions to which we are being called today, giving up our entitlements for the sake of our vocation as servants.